Daggermancer
As the name applies, Daggermancer is Necromancer build (made by J.T) that focus on two things, Poison Dagger along with other poison skills and Iron Golem. This is unncommon build for a Necromancer, because it will be more focused on Necromancer as strong fighter unlike his other incarnations. Thing is that there are NO other summons then Iron Golem and with Necromancer's Bone Spirit ability, player will be able to survive most of the hand-to-hand battles with no sweat. Good side: ]] Strong fighter Extremely high poison damage that will take out most of the enemies in matter of seconds, Bone armor as lifesaver Unique gameplay Bad Side No other summons than Iron Golem Item dependent Might be difficult to play with for unexperienced Necromancer player This build is yet to be fully tested, so there might be some problems'' '' Stat Point Distribution and Paladin]] This is rather unique build for Necromancer, and instead on focusing on Energy, this build would be focused on Strength\Dexterity like any fighter should be. Strength: Strength should go high enough only to wear specific weapon or armor. Dexterity: Dexterity is the most important stat for Daggermancer build. It should go high, real high. Vitality: Vitality is important to this build and it should be high enough to survive hard battles. It should be lower then Dexterity, but again, it should be considered to have high number of Vitality points since Necromancer's natural life boost per level is pretty low. Energy: No need for Energy. Necromancers have natural high mana boost per level, so there is no need for it. This build won't use many mana anyway, so items will do the trick. Skills This build mainly focuses on Iron Golem and Poison Dagger so naturally those should be the priority skills. Poison Dagger Since Daggermancer needs poison damage and attack rating, this should be taken to level 20. It will give Daggermancer about 1000-1100 poison damage with Poison Explosion and Poison Nova. It will also give about +430 to attack rating for Daggermancer. Iron Golem Since Iron Golem is player's only companion, it should be considered that Iron Golem is level 20, faster, the better. Golem Mastery or Blood Golem? There is a question about what should be taken to boost Iron Golem? Answer is simple "it depends on player's gameplay style". Golem Mastery gives Life, Attack Rating and Walk\Run Speed bonus, so it's not a bad option to have it maximized. It's also necessary for Summon Resist so it should be taken at least once. Since Blood Golem gives 5% life per level, it's not a bad option either. This really depends on player, who can chose to have 20 level of Golem Mastery, or to have few points in it and about five points on Clay Golem, Blood Golem and Fire Golem. It might be even better to have it that way because it will result in boosting your Iron Golem with different bonuses. So the final choice would be: Level 20 Golem Mastery or Level 5 Golem Mastery Level 5 Clay Golem Level 5 Blood Golem Level 5 Fire Golem It really makes a little difference, the choice is up to player. Secondary Skills Please consider that this is taken by players own decision. Player can chose to take some skills more or some skills less, but it's recommended to follow this build since it's been tested and it works well this way. Level 5 Summon Resist - There is no need to give this skill higher status, since it really makes no big differences. One level will boost only about +2 to all resist so spending too much skill points on this would be wasted. Instead, let your items do the trick, in other words, find as many items as you can that gives + X to Necromancer (or All) Skills. Level 5-10 Bone Wall or Bone Prison - This skills should be taken depending on how well player is doing. Since Bone Armor gives only + 10 Damage Absorb per level, and Bone Wall\Prison gives + 15 Damage Absorb per Level to Bone Armor, it's better to take few times both of these skills, or one. In other words, either Level 5-10 of Bone Wall or Bone Prison, or have about five levels of both. Also, this should range from five to ten skills depending on how much player wants to spend skill points on other skills, mainly on Poison Nova or Poison Explosion. Poison Explosion or Poison Nova? Answer is really simple. It's better to give Poison Nova more skill points, since it will be the real killer on Normal Mode and it will be great crippler on Nightmare and Hell difficulties. Since player must take Poison Explosion in order to take Poison Nova, it can be leaved to items to boost it's level. Poison Nova is more recommended for this build. For further tactics and informations please read below. Curses This build only requires Amplify Damage , Iron Maiden and Life Tap . Other Curses are up to player if he wants to take them, but there is no need for them. If player wants to take other Curses, he can chose curses needed for Lower Resist since other side of the Curses being Dim vision , Confuse and Attract are pretty useless for this build. Equipment Every item that gives skill bonus, attack rating, poison damage, bonus to resistance, attribute bonuses are welcomed for this build. Since this Necromancer build focuses on Necromancer as fighter, player must be aware that Daggermancer will be able to wear heavy armors and large shields to survive hard battles. Helms Andariel's Visage is good option for this build since it gives lot of defense, + to All Skills, a lot of Strength boosts, and in general it boosts the Daggermancer's fighting capabilities, but the only downside is that it cripples fire resistance which can be problematic on higher difficulties. This problem can be solved by equipping shields that give extra fire resistance bonuses (Ral Rune or Perfect Ruby into socket shield will do the trick). Armor Atma's Wail is good option since it improves Daggermancer's magic abilities since he will not have lot connection to the magic in this build. Other great choice is Duriel's Shell Cuirass since it gives lot of defense, life, resistance and give ability "Cannot be Frozen" which is pretty much helpful with this build. Gloves Having trangs is all you need and it is nice option since it gives extra poison damage. Shield Shield along with Dagger might be most important thing to this build, so this should be planned with care. One of the best choices that player can take is to equip Blackoak Shield , a unique Luna shield that gives decent amount of defense, +50% faster block rate which is really important to this build, and it gives +XX Dexterity and XX to Life bonus depending on character level. It also gives Cold Absorb depending on character level which is really important not only for this build, but for any other fighter build. Boots Sandstorm Trek Scarabshell Boots is good choice, but since boots doesn't play big roll in this build, they can be easily replace by others. Belt Arachnid Mech Plated Belt is not a bad option, but it can be easily replaced by better one. Look for Nosferatu's Coil since it gives poison bonus damage along with few other things useful for this build. Dagger Find unique Daggers (mostly Kris that gives a lot of poison damage. Blackbog's Sharp Cinquedeas is good choice since it gives heavy bonus to poison skills and insanely high poison damage (range from 400-600 of poison damage over 10 seconds) Iron Golem Items Basiclly, player can chose items for his golem creation depending on what he wants of golem to be - attacker or defender. For defense, unique Kraken Shell is not a bad choice due to heavy defense bonuses, and Viperfork , and unique Mancatcher is great choice for attacker since golem will attack with incredible speed and will do more then 300 poison damage on each attack. Gameplay and tactics General tactics Due to unique play of this build there are few things player should know on how to attack and defend enemies. Knowing that attack is best defense, but sometimes player will need to be cunning and retreat if groups are too large. What player needs to do is run toward enemies, cast Poison Nova which will slowly reduce enemies life, cast a curse and let Poison Dagger do heavy work combined with power of Iron Golem. Casting a curse There are few things player should know about the curse casting. First of all, many player instantly use Iron Maiden on every enemy they see. This is bad. Iron Maiden should be cast only one enemies that have very high damage such as Bosses - Duriel , Mephisto , Diablo and similar. With Iron Golem's Thorn ability this would prove deadly for enemies. Two curses player will mostly use would be Amplify Damage and Life Tap. Amplify damage should be cast regularly, and Life Tap should be cast if there is huge number of enemies. If group of enemies is more then player can handle, cast Poison Nova to and send Iron Golem to kill at least one creature, then cast Amplify Damage on enemies and cast Corpse Explosion to hurt enemies for extremely high damage. Category:Necromancer Category:Builds